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A quiet stretch of terrain in the Macragge highlands, lightly wooded with a few rolling hills and ruins greets the day like many others, expecting naught but the local dust bunnies, gone feral, but otherwise harmless. No blood has stained these grounds since a small cluster of Tyranids was rooted out and defeated nearly two years ago.



But today the Ultramarines are here to put some practice to a theoretical: What would happen if the Sons of Dorn fell to the ruinous powers?

The Forces:
Mechanized Strikeforce, The Valiant Ultramarines.


Gladius/10th, The Sinister Imperial Fists.


(In a surprising move, my opponent chose the drop list, much maligned by the good folk here on Dakka (and both of us) as the weaker of the two lists. But he wanted to try the new formations, and who was I to argue.)

As a Dawn of War breaks over the field, the forces form battle lines, between them a servo skull acts the part of a valuable Relic, the key to victory in this scenario.



This is after the infiltration/scout moves. The snipers had advanced into the woods, and the scout bikes had boldly advanced with their locator beacon. I’m going second and opt not to seize.

The stillness of the morning that was previously disturbed with the gentle rumbling of engines is now shattered as two drop pods slam into the field and disgorge their contents, their precision landings thanks to the efforts of the 10th company forward team.
Top of 1

The HB/P and ML/F tactical squads land and combat squad out of the pods on my left flank. The speeder is brought down with precision small arms fire, while the flamer and plasma combat squads with the help of backfield fire from the LSS and dread, erase a melta bike squad. The last combat squad runs into the woods en route to the relic. The assault marines advance as well.
On the other flank, the sternguard’s rhino eats a few megajoules of coherent light, and reorganizes itself into a wreck. Two vets die in the explosion.

At this point I’m starting to regret taking the second turn, but frankly when the pods came down I was going to eat a lot of pain regardless. In hindsight, I probably should have anchored the flank with the LR. Oh well. Time to respond!
Bottom of 1 (two angles)



Reacting instantly to the threats, the veterans of the 1st company turn to deal with the newly arrived foes, while the bikes zoom to silence the death lurking in the far ruins

Overwatch: statistics can go do unkind things to itself, and I’m going to have to have some stern words with the techmarines about armor maintenance. The chaplain joins the disembarking terminators, and goes to flush the combat squad out of the woods. Two are cut down before they reach the treeline. Vengeance is swift and brutal though. The vanguard similarly loose two men on the way in, the sarge with the lighning claw and the brother with the power lance, just the tools I needed to deal with marines. Keep an eye on the guy with the axe.
On the right flank, the sternguard advance on the relic while peppering some suppression fire on the snipers (shot, no damage). The pred manages to splash the LSS. Bikes turbo boost towards the devs.

A loud bang reverberates in the drop pod moments before impact. Not the usual sound of interceptor fire against the hull, but one of the maneuvering thrusters has malfunctioned, skewing the pod off course. Undaunted, the marines disembark from the unexpected landing site, reorient, and make for their target

Top of 2:

See that die right near the devs? That’s about where the pod was supposed to come down. Big scatter. He wheals most of his army around and unleashes a torrent of fire into the bikes. Jinking saves some wounds, and the squad is not totally eliminated.
Over on the other front, one combat squad finishes off their vet, and consolidates towards the center. The bikes move off to the side to try to entice my terminators to charge them.

The plasma explosion washes over the attack bike, vaporizing two nearby bikes and the drivers arm. Evasive maneuvers are not going to be enough to survive in the open, and the only cover available is occupied buy the op-force devastator squad. That can be rectified. The throttle roars as the wounded attack bike barrels towards the ruins
Bottom of 2:


My sternguard move around the hill and polish off the bolter scouts with a crisp delivery of kraken rounds. Longer range and AP4 are just what is called for here. The chaplain and the terminators fall back and eliminate a squad of marines before they can reach the center. Oh, I forget to mention, the wound on the chaplain? Tree branch when he first charged into the woods. My dice were in quite the mood the first turn. You think being a veteran with a power axe would mean something in CC. He and the tacs slap each other around a bit ineffectually. Without any meaningful armor to target, the LR turns it’s fire on the captain. An assault marine bravely take a LC hit, while a HB round punctures the captain’s armor.

Their gambit to entice the terminators out of position unsuccessful, the 10th company bikers rush to seize the relic, for in it lies victory
Top of 3:


Hey weren’t the sternguard standing there just a minute ago? Not after they took some assorted fire and the wrath of a very angry captain. You might notice the vanguard with the axe has killed a marine. They going to break from that? No way. The other combat squad of venerable RTB01 beekies decides that they’d rather do the charging, rather then the other way around. Surprisingly they pull down the TH/SS terminator and survive the retaliation. Over with the devs, the attack bike valiantly holds on. He does kill one dev, but I forget if it was on the charge, now, or the bottom of this round.

”Driver, I don’t like the look of that assault squad, pivot to bear. Gunner, eliminate them. Hurry! Nownownow”
Bottom of 3:


The captain and the assault squad (with the powerfist sarge) are a little closer to my tanks then I’d like. The tanks take aim, and blow the squad away, but the captain remains alive. Not good. Hey look! The axe guy killed another tactical marine. He’s the pinnacle of marine close combat, equipped with a weapon capable of cutting through the thickest armor in existence. He’s being tarpitted by a combat squad of tactical marines. He’s been in this fight since the bottom of turn one. Wounded attack bike? Shrugging off wounds like a boss, keeping those devs tied up.

”Damn sensitive gavitics. We need to make speed and get behind that hill before someone notices us up here.” Put put put …
Top of 4:

Scout bikers have the football, and not enough movement to get to cover. The captain is not going after the tank like I thought, but instead plows into the chaplain, challenging him to a duel. A short, murderous exchange later, he’s still standing, but his foes are not. A whole tactical squad plows into the wounded attack bike. He cares not. Meanwhile on the other side of the table, the vet still has two dancing partners.

Oh, crap! Incoming! Evasive pattern Delta
Bottom of 4


The only shooting I have is the tanks. They mostly fire at the scout bikers, who jink valiantly, but two of them (importantly the one with the relic) are felled. The land raider’s machine spirit, wrathful at the death of the chaplain, skews the port lascannons around, and shows the captain the meaning of “Godhammer” He fails his iron halo save, and gets ID’d.
You might not be able to see the attack bike in that pile, but trust me, he’s still there. The Vet and his two friend are there too, but I didn’t feel he deserved to be in the picture.

”I don’t think the bikers are going to be able to secure that objective sarge”
“Good assessment of the tactical situation recruit. Lets hustle over there and help”
Top of 5:
Sorry, missed a picture of this one.

The snipers start running towards the relic, and the remaining scout biker doubles back to grab it. All those close combats? The biker puts another dev down. A testament to the biker’s valor and the vet’s incompetence. Or just the dice being fickle.


With a crunch the bolter stock slammed into the back of the gunners neck. He slumped down into the sidecar, unconscious. The tactical sergeant checked his chronometer. “Rest brother, your duty fulfilled. First the drop, and now this delay. We are out of position and nearly out of time. But we have overcome greater odds in the past! Men, double time to the objective!”
Bottom of 5:


The lone scout biker has little chance of holding on to the relic alive, but gives it a shot. He fails. A stray LC shot stuns the dread. The attack bike finally succumbs to the waves of rifle buts that have been hammering him the last few turns. Mr. Axe? Still dancing.

Roll to continue? Yup!

”I’ve got it sarge!”
“Getting it is the easy part, keeping it is where things get tricky. Good thing we’ve got backup”
Top of 6:

Lots of running, no shooting. And dancing. Always the dance, even when not in the picture.

”Keep firing until nothing moves on that hill!”
Bottom of 6:

Camo cloaks and going to ground helps a little, but not enough to keep the point man alive. We roll to end, and that’s a wrap.

Nobody has the relic, both warlords are dead. He’s got first blood, and pods in my deployment zone. Victory to drop pod formation!

Oh, how did the vanguard vet do? I just checked up on him. The game’s been over for about 8 hours now.

He’s still working on it…

I'm pleasantly surprised that the drop pod list won. Nice batrep, the little snippets of fluff made it especially enjoyable

That battle report was hilarious, sounded like fun as well.

Thanks for writing that up, Nev! You did a good job

Fun! Fun, and confusing to look at.

Glad you are enjoy it.

There were a lot of problems trying to get two armies on the table. I could have tried to balance an Eldar list vs. my Ultras, but I don’t have a lot of them painted yet. And frankly “Eldar” and “Balance” aren’t really on speaking terns. I do have a smattering of BA, but while I might have been able to get enough points of them, they would be massively dysfunctional. So the easy thing to do was pull both armies from the Ultramarines.

There were some other considerations as well as making a pair of lists that would be fun to play against each other. I wanted to try to mirror the lists of my opponent, Zambro, with what I had on the shelf. He’s a White Scars guy, who building up an army of Imperial Fists in pods. So a lot of the units were as close as I could get to the WIP over in his blog. I wanted to try to include some familiar elements, even if his own armies were a few thousand miles away.

There are some subtle differences in my marines. When it comes time to unpack, and put guys back on the shelf, I can normally sort out the squads without looking at the numbers written on the bottom of the base. But to someone unfamiliar with my collection, that’d be rough. So when building the armies, I tried to keep things discrete. The drop pod list is all power armor and scouts. The mech list is all bikes and veterans. It’s one reason I decided not to tweak the lists to make them a little more balanced against each other. The last thing we needed was a scrum of tac marines mixing it up in some confusing close combat.